COURAGE

connecting collections

The book provides easy access to the archival materials preserved in Alojzij Šuštar Collection, which are otherwise accessible only to a limited degree. It documents the struggle of Archbishop Šuštar to force the communist government to grant basic freedoms to Catholics, such as the right not to work on Christmas. It follows his activities in the process of Slovenia becoming an independent state. Therefore, the book is an unavoidable source for studying more recent Slovenian history.

The book Tartust Pariisi ja tagasi. Rännakutest, kunstist ja möödanikust (From Tartu to Paris and back. About journeys, art, and the past) consists of writings and poems by Indrek Hirv. Reproductions of works of art in his collection are also published in the book. It is even more important that the lives and fates of Hirv and his parents, as well as the lives of his parents’ friends, who were all artists, are described in this book. The book gives an insight into the views and spirit of a circle of artists who in one way or another opposed Soviet authority.

The current owner approached several institutions in Ukraine with these materials on several occasions. The first such meeting took place in 2003 (possibly 2013) at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (formerly the Kyiv Art Institute), which suggested that the owner leave the documents there for inspection. As no one showed interest in these materials, they remained unpublished. In November 2015, the owner once again approached researchers, this time to much greater effect. In April 2016, together with other materials about the Kyiv period of Malevich, the documents related to his teaching at the Kyiv Art Institute in 1928-1930 from the Kropyvnytskyi archive were published in the monograph "Kazimir Malevich: The Kyiv Period 1928-1930" by Rodovid publishing house in Kyiv, who bought a one-year copyright for the materials. 

The discussion about the exhibition was organized by the Sofia City Art Gallery with participation of the director of the Gallery, Adelina Fileva; the curator of the exhibition, Krasimir Iliev; journalist Toni Nikolov, editor of the Portal "Culture"; Ekaterina Boncheva, a member of the Committee for Disclosing the Documents and Announcing Affiliation of Bulgarian Citizens to State Security and Intelligence Services of Bulgarian National Army (in brief: Comdos); historian Dr. Momchil Metodiev, professor at Sofia University; literary critic Mihail Nedelchev, professor at the New Bulgarian University; and art critic Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva.

The exhibition was presented as a provocation against the idea of ​​resistance as "shooting with sub-machine gun” (Toni Nikolov), visualizing the great variety of forms of resistance in art. The event drew significant attention by people of all ages. 

The editors and authors of “World in Move” received their secret police files from the Hungarian State Security Archives (ÁBTL) per their official requests submitted after the change of the political system, and in 2016 they displayed some of them for the exhibition of the Ferenczy Museum in Szentendre.
The late revelation of the one-time secret agent reports shocked the Hungarian intellectual circles. The most scandalous case, provoking a passionate public debate on pages of the literary weekly Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature) in 1999, was that of the late unmasking of an agent with the pseudonym ‘Hajdú.’ He was in fact Sándor Tar, a reputable prose writer, who had been writing secret reports extensively for years on his best friends and colleagues, among them György Berkovits, an editor of “World in Move” responsible for the sociological publications.